Overview (4)

Mini Bio (2)

Martin Charles Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942, in New York City, to Italian-American parents Catherine (Cappa) and Charles Scorsese. He was raised in the neighborhood of Little Italy, which later provided the inspiration for several of his films. Scorsese earned a B.S. degree in film communications in 1964, followed by an M.A. in the same field in 1966 at New York University's School of Film. During this time, he made numerous prize-winning short films including The Big Shave (1968), and directed his first feature film, Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967).

His long-cherished project, Gangs of New York (2002), earned numerous critical honors, including a Golden Globe Award for Best Director; the Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator (2004) won five Academy Awards, in addition to the Golden Globe and BAFTA awards for Best Picture. Scorsese won his first Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed (2006), which was also honored with the Director's Guild of America, Golden Globe, New York Film Critics, National Board of Review and Critic's Choice awards for Best Director, in addition to four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Scorsese's documentary of the Rolling Stones in concert, Shine a Light (2008), followed, with the successful thriller Shutter Island (2010) two years later. Scorsese received his seventh Academy Award nomination for Best Director, as well as a Golden Globe win, for Hugo (2011), which went on to win five Academy Awards.

Scorsese also serves as executive producer on HBO's series Boardwalk Empire (2010) for which he directed the pilot episode. Scorsese's additional awards and honors include the Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival (1995), the AFI Life Achievement Award (1997), the Honoree at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's 25th Gala Tribute (1998), the DGA Lifetime Achievement Award (2003), The Kennedy Center Honors (2007) and the HFPA Cecil B. DeMille Award (2010).

After serious deliberations about entering the priesthood - he entered a seminary in 1956 - Martin Scorsese opted to channel his passions into film. He graduated from NYU as a film major in 1964. Catching the eye of producer Roger Corman with his 1960s student films (including co-editing Woodstock (1970)), Scorsese directed the gritty exploiter Boxcar Bertha (1972). Mean Streets (1973) followed in 1973 and provided the benchmarks for the Scorsese style: New York settings, loners struggling with inner demons, pointed-shoes rock-meets-opera soundtracks and unrelenting cathartic violence. "Mean Streets" also featured Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel, two actors who would help shape that style. After Scorsese directed Ellen Burstyn to a Best Actress Oscar in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), the trio was reunited for the dark journey of Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976). The film achieved additional notoriety five years after its release when Bickle's (De Niro) concern for a teenaged hooker played by Jodie Foster inspired John Hinckley's assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in 1981. After New York, New York (1977) (which one critic described as a wife-abuse musical) and The Last Waltz (1978), Scorsese released Raging Bull (1980) dedicated to his mentor Haig Manoogian. The biography of middleweight fighter Jake LaMotta earned two Oscars (Actor - DeNiro, Editing - Thelma Schoonmaker) and was later selected as the best film of the decade by U.S. critic gods Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. Scorsese then explored fans as pariah (The King of Comedy (1982)), dark-comic dreams (After Hours (1985)), and revisited pool shark Eddie Felson from The Hustler (1961) ( The Color of Money (1986) with Paul Newman). Scorsese outraged some religious groups by attempting to portray a human son of God in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) before returning to more familiar territory with the Mafia in Goodfellas (1990). He followed with two films which were remakes, Cape Fear (1991) and The Age of Innocence (1993). Besides directing and co-writing, Scorsese has also acted. It's interesting to note he played the gunman at the finale of Mean Streets (1973) and the cab passenger planning to kill his wife in Taxi Driver (1976). He also had a role in Dreams (1990).

Often uses diagetic music (i.e., source of music is visible on-screen)

Often uses long tracking shots (His most famous is from Goodfellas (1990), following Henry Hill and his future wife Karen through the basement of the Copacabana night-club and ending up at a newly prepared table). A notoriously difficult shot to perfect, he has been dubbed by some as the "King of the Tracking Shot".

Though he is particular about the aesthetics of every shot, he frequently encourages improvisation in dialogue.

Often when the formal end-credits song is over before the credit sequence, the remaining minute or so will have atmospheric sound footage pertaining to the movie. For instance, The Age Of Innocence (1993) had sounds of a horse-drawn carriage; The Last Waltz (1978) had the Winterland audience filing out as "Greensleeves" was played on the organ; Gangs Of New York (2002) had modern-day New York City traffic, and Raging Bull (1980) had sounds of Lamotta's nightclub.

He directed Michael Jackson's Michael Jackson: Bad (1987) music video. The full length video runs 16 minutes and is in both black & white and color. It is usually shortened down to just the color segment for television.

He appears as attached to his pet white Bichon Frise Zoe as he was to his beloved parents - except Zoe is right beside Marty every day in the office.

Was at one point slated to direct Clockers (1995), but for reasons that are not entirely clear, handed the directing chores to his onetime NYU student Spike Lee, while staying on as producer. He was also at one point going to direct Little Shop of Horrors (1986) for David Geffen, with Steven Spielberg as the executive producer. He was ultimately uninvolved, but claims that he wanted to shoot the movie in 3-D. It no doubt would have been a loving homage to Roger Corman, for whom he directed Boxcar Bertha (1972).

He took a cameo in his film Taxi Driver (1976) (as a man about to kill his wife) only because the actor who was supposed to play the role was sick on the day the scene was to be shot. Says he is generally uncomfortable in front of the camera.

Has a dog named Silas.

Is the subject of the song "Martin Scorsese" by alternative band King Missile.

Was voted the 4th greatest director of all time by Entertainment Weekly, making him the only living person in the top 5 and the only working film director in the top 10 (Ingmar Bergman being retired as a filmmaker).

Appeared on Curb Your Enthusiasm (1999) as a shrill version of himself who comes to regret his decision to cast Larry David as a violent gangster in a movie after David repeatedly ruins the suit he needs to wear as the character.

He was one of three major directors to have been offered the opportunity to direct Schindler's List (1993) by producer Steven Spielberg, the other two being Roman Polanski and Billy Wilder. Scorsese thought a Jewish filmmaker should direct it; Polanski wasn't yet ready to deal with the painful subject (having lost his mother in the Holocaust); and Wilder (who was retired and who lost his mother and grandmother in the Holocaust) finally told Spielberg that he should do it himself.

Because so many of his actors win or are nominated for awards, actors are dying to work with him. The film With Friends Like These... (1998) pokes fun at this very real desire.

Both The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and Gangs of New York (2002) were personal passions of his that he had wanted to make since the 1970s. When he first starting considering them, Robert De Niro was in his mind to play the lead characters in both (Jesus Christ in "Temptation" and Bill Cutting in "Gangs"). De Niro ultimately turned down the part in "Temptation" and it was decided he was too old to play Cutting by the time that "Gangs" finally went into production.

He has famously collaborated with Robert De Niro in 8 films. Scorsese has said that his creative collaboration with De Niro is very deep and that they can often understand each other without even talking. Their collaboration has had many dry spells (including recently), but Scorsese says he shows almost every script he writes or considers directing to De Niro to see what the actor's thoughts on them are even when De Niro ultimately has no involvement the film.

Appeared in an "American Express" ad where he goes to pick up photos of his nephew's birthday party at a drug store, and then proceeds to nervously pick through what's wrong with each picture while trying to get the clueless photo-lab clerk's opinion on them. He proceeds to buy more film with an American Express card and calls the people on the pictures saying they need to reshoot. Scorsese says this funny ad is probably the closest he's come to accurately "playing" himself.

Apart from his legendary work as a filmmaker, he has been a vocal supporter of film preservation for almost three decades. His efforts to create a strong public awareness for the work of film archives include The Film Foundation, a non-profit organisation which he started together with other filmmakers. The Film Foundation regularly partners with the American film archives on the restoration of "lost" or endangered films.

With this background he has agreed to serve as Honorary President of the Austrian Film Museum in Vienna.

Personally spurns the notion of the "director's cut" feeling that once a film has been completed, it should not be further altered in any way.

The 1912 American Mutoscope & Biograph Company short The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) heavily influenced Scorsese in the making of his own gangster films Goodfellas (1990), and Gangs of New York (2002). The film was picked by Scorcese for his 2005 tribute at Beaubourg (1977) in Paris, France. Biograph is the oldest movie company in America and in existence today, headed by producer/director Thomas R. Bond II.

As a teenager in the Bronx, Scorsese frequently rented Michael Powell's The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) from a store that only had one copy of the reels. When it wasn't available the owner told him, "that Romero kid has it," referring to George A. Romero who was also a big fan of the film. Today, both directors cite the film as a major influence.

Says he was happy with the fact that it took so long for him to win Best Director, because if he had won it earlier, it would have affected his directing and films.

Other than his short films and documentaries, all his film from 1972 to 1990 were shot in Widescreen aspect ratio (1.85:1) and all his film form 1992 onward were shot in CinemaScope aspect ratio (2.35:1).

The death of Federico Fellini was very similar to his father's death. Bypass surgery, a stroke and then a coma. Scorsese also noted that they both lasted exactly the same days in the coma.

Scorsese's elaborate 2010 docu-commercial for "Bleu de Chanel" men's French fragrance, flashes a very brief image of a clapper board with the name - "C Cappa" - written on the Director credit space. Apparently this is an homage to his mother whose maiden name was C(atherine) Cappa.

Directed three films on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest Movies: Raging Bull (1980) at #4, Taxi Driver (1976) at #52 and Goodfellas (1990) at #92.

The Magic Box (1951) was the film that created the biggest impression on him and made him think he could do film making himself.

According to lifelong collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker, Marty's favorite facet of the filmmaking process is the editing.

Donated his collection of papers, photographs, memorabilia and other film-related ephemera to the Wesleyan University Cinema Archive, where it is conserved along with the collections of such film luminaries as Frank Capra, Clint Eastwood, Ingrid Bergman, John Waters, Elia Kazan and others. The Archive is kept under the supervision of renowned film historian, scholar and Professor of Film Studies Jeanine Basinger.

Went to see The Searchers (1956) on the afternoon of the day that he graduated from Parochial school.

Named after his maternal grandfather, Martin "Filippo" Cappa.

Was given the script of Taxi Driver by his friend director Brian De Palma.

Was at one time interested in making a remake of Scarface with Robert De Niro.

President of the jury at the 13th Marrakech Film Festival in 2013.

Despite being known for his gangster films, he has only made five films out of almost 50 about the Mob: Mean Streets (1973), Goodfellas (1990), Casino (1995), Gangs of New York (2002) and The Departed (2006). His other films vary in genre and style, from period epics to musical to biopic of the 14th Dalai Lama.

Admits he made ''Hugo (2011)'' so he'd have at least one film his daughter could watch.

Despite being known for directing extremely dark and often very violent movies, he is known in real life to be a very friendly, polite and mild-mannered person who gets along very well with his cast and crew.

Once surprised Dave Chappelle by saying he was a fan and quoting from "The Playa Haters Ball".

Has written 3 books on the cinema - 'A Director's Diary: the Making of Kundun', 'The Magic Box; 201 Movie Favourites' and 'A Personal journey with Martin Scorcese Through American Movies'( A literary adaption of his Channel 4/British Film Institute documentary.

Martin Scorsese has himself been directed by such directors as Robert Altman, Robert Redford, Akira Kurosawa, Albert Brooks, and Irwin Winkler.

Personal Quotes (79)

The only person who has the right attitude about boxing in the movies for me was Buster Keaton.

[on sports] Anything with a ball, no good.

Because of the movies I make, people get nervous, because they think of me as difficult and angry. I am difficult and angry, but they don't expect a sense of humor. And the only thing that gets me through is a sense of humor.

[on Raging Bull (1980)]: Robert De Niro wanted to make this film. Not me. I don't understand anything about boxing. For me, it's like a physical game of chess.

It seems to me that any sensible person must see that violence does not change the world and if it does, then only temporarily.

I think when you're young and have that first burst of energy and make five or six pictures in a row that tell the stories of all the things in life you want to say . . . well, maybe those are the films that should have won me the Oscar. When Taxi Driver (1976) was up for Best Picture, it got three other nominations: Best Actor [Robert De Niro], Best Supporting Actress [Jodie Foster] and Best Music. But the director and writer were overlooked. I was so disappointed, I said, "You know what? That's the way it's going to be". What was I going to do, go home and cry?

Basically, you make another movie, and another, and hopefully you feel good about every picture you make. And you say, "My name is on that. I did that. It's OK". But don't get me wrong, I still get excited by it all. That, I hope, will never disappear.

I think a lot of it has to do with the nature of the community. I've lived here in Los Angeles, but I'm more of a New Yorker, and the nature of my films is regarded as somewhat violent and the language is considered tough. As you grow older, you change. I make different films now. You don't make pictures for Oscars.

I'm in a different chapter of my life. As time goes by and I grow older, I find that I need to just be quiet and think. There have been periods when I've locked myself away for days, but now it's different - I'm married and we have a daughter who is in my office the whole time.

If I continue to make films about New York, they will probably be set in the past. The "new" New York I don't know much about. It's not that I'm against contemporary film. I'm open to it in general, but I find the new colors of the city, the new Times Square, kind of shocking. I guess I'm stuck in a time warp.

It probably is better I didn't win in the '70s or mid-'80s or something. My view on making films is somewhat different in a way, and I think maybe it's something that . . . I was not able to handle at the time . . . Had I gotten an Oscar, maybe I would have gotten maybe an extra two days shooting, maybe a couple, you know what I'm saying?

I prefer celluloid - there's no doubt about it. Yet I know that if I was starting to make movies now, as a young person, if I could get my hands on a DV camera, I probably would have started that way . . . There's no doubt I'm an older advocate of pure celluloid, but ultimately I see it going by the wayside, except in museums, and even then it could be a problem.

My whole life has been movies and religion. That's it. Nothing else.

There is no such thing as pointless violence. "City of God" [City of God (2002)], is that pointless violence? It's reality, it's real life, it has to do with the human condition. Being involved in Christianity and Catholicism when I was very young, you have that innocence, the teachings of Christ. Deep down you want to think that people are really good - but the reality outweighs that.

I'm a lapsed Catholic. But I am Roman Catholic - there's no way out of it.

[on the Iraq war] One hopes that this kind of war can be done diplomatically, with intelligence rather than wiping out a lot of innocent civilians.

[on political correctness] You can hardly say anything about minorities now. It has made it extremely difficult to open your mouth.

[on the Iraq war] There are a lot of Americans who also feel that a lot of this war talk is economic, part of this has to do with the oil. I think it really has to come down to respecting how other people live. There's got to be ways this can be worked out diplomatically, there simply has to be.

What does it take to be a filmmaker in Hollywood? Even today I still wonder what it takes to be a professional or even an artist in Hollywood. How do you survive the constant tug of war between personal expression and commercial imperatives? What is the price you pay to work in Hollywood? Do you end up with a split personality? Do you make one movie for them, one for yourself?

Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.

[onstage at the 2007 Oscars after winning for Best Director] Could you double-check the envelope?

[on Robert De Niro] And even now I still know of nobody who can surprise me on the screen the way he does -- and did then. No actor comes to mind who can provide such power and excitement.

[on working with Liza Minnelli on New York, New York (1977)] After 15 minutes I realized that not only could she sing she could be one hell of an actress. She's so malleable and inventive. And fun, even when things are hard.

[on Stanley Kubrick] One of his films... is equivalent to ten of somebody else's. Watching a Kubrick film is like gazing up at a mountain top. You look up and wonder, "How could anyone have climbed that high?"

[on Stanley Kubrick] Why does something stay with you for so many years? It's really a person with a very powerful storytelling ability. A talent... a genius, who could create a solid rock image that has conviction.

But once Haig Manoogian started talking about film, I realized that I could put that passion into movies, and then I realized that the Catholic vocation was, in a sense, through the screen for me.

It's hilarious, the problems that arise when you're on the set. It's really funny because you make a complete fool of yourself. I think I know how to use dissolves, the grammar of cinema. But there's only one place for the camera. That's the right place. Where is the right place? I don't know. You get there somehow.

I can't take shooting any scene for granted. I just can't. The moment I do that, I have no idea what I'm doing. "Oh, that'll be easy, I'll do that in five minutes." Believe me, that never happens.

[on Robert De Niro] I've come to know De Niro fairly well down the years. He's a very compassionate man. He's basically a very good man and you can see that in him. So he can take on characters that are pretty disturbing and make them human because of that compassion. It's taken me years to figure it out. He has an ability to make audiences feel empathy for very difficult characters because there is something very decent in him.

[on Akira Kurosawa] His influence on filmmakers throughout the entire world is so profound as to be almost incomparable,.

[on Akira Kurosawa] The term "giant" is used too often to describe artists. But in the case of Akira Kurosawa, we have one of the rare instances where the term fits.

[on Leonardo DiCaprio] Leo has a similar sensibility to me. I'm 30 years older than him, but I think we see the world the same way, meaning he feels comfortable with the characters I've dealt with over the years in movies. But also with Leo it's always an interesting process of discovery. And I don't say that in a facile way either, because we never know what that process is going to be, and it's always intimidating at first. And then Leo really gets into it and we start unravelling all these layers. With Shutter Island (2010) the story really lent itself to that.

When I did The Age of Innocence (1993), the critics said, "Is it wrong to expect a little more heat from Scorsese?" I thought "Age of Innocence" was pretty hot. So I said, "Alright, I'll do Casino (1995)," and they said, "Well, gee, it's the same as Goodfellas (1990)." You can't win. Yes, "Casino" has the style of "Goodfellas", but it has more to do with America and even Hollywood--the idea of never being satisfied.

Movies touch our hearts and awaken our vision, and change the way we see things. They take us to other places, they open doors and minds. Movies are the memories of our life time, we need to keep them alive.

The Color of Money (1986) was deep-rooted in social concern about the effect money has on the upper class. The billiards game in the film was a symbol depicting society. I very much liked Paul Newman in The Hustler (1961), and thought of repeating him in a character with more mature shades. He scored with his brilliant underplaying, winning an Oscar. He was very cooperative with newcomer Tom Cruise, who showed promise. In fact, the whistling tone in the film titles was Newman's idea. He was one of those actors who made method acting spontaneous, and his emerald eyes spoke volumes.

I considered it a true cinematic challenge of working with a versatile actor such as Robert De Niro, who moulds himself according to each character. The only other actor who matches his histrionic ability is Al Pacino.

L'Avventura (1960) gave me one of the most profound shocks I've ever had at the movies, greater even than Breathless (1960) or Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959). Or La Dolce Vita (1960). At the time there were two camps, the people who liked the [Federico Fellini] film and the ones who liked "L'Avventura". I knew I was firmly on [Michelangelo Antonioni's side of the line, but if you'd asked me at the time, I'm not sure I would have been able to explain why. I loved Fellini's pictures and I admired "La Dolce Vita", but I was challenged by "L'Avventura". Fellini's film moved me and entertained me, but Antonioni's film changed my perception of cinema, and the world around me, and made both seem limitless. I was mesmerized by "L'Avventura" and by Antonioni's subsequent films, and it was the fact that they were unresolved in any conventional sense that kept drawing me back. They posed mysterie--or rather the mystery, of who we are, what we are, to each other, to ourselves, to time. You could say that Antonioni was looking directly at the mysteries of the soul. That's why I kept going back. I wanted to keep experiencing these pictures, wandering through them. I still do.

[on casting Ray Liotta as Henry Hill in Goodfellas (1990)] I'd seen Ray in Something Wild (1986), Jonathan Demme's film; I really liked him. And then I met him. I was walking across the lobby of the hotel on the Lido that houses the Venice Film Festival, and I was there with The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). I had a lot of bodyguards around me. Ray approached me in the lobby and the bodyguards moved toward him, and he had an interesting way of reacting, which was he held his ground, but made them understand he was no threat. I liked his behavior at that moment, and I saw, Oh, he understands that kind of situation. That's something you wouldn't have to explain to him.

Very often I've known people who wouldn't say a word to each other, but they'd go to see movies together and experience life that way.

A painting can't turn. If you look closely at some of the portraits from cubism at the time, you'll find a portrait of a woman that is really a projector.

Every shot [while making Hugo (2011) in 3D] is rethinking cinema, rethinking narrative - how to tell a story with a picture. Now, I'm not saying we have to keep throwing javelins at the camera, I'm not saying we use it as a gimmick, but it's liberating. It's literally a Rubik's Cube every time you go out to design a shot, and work out a camera move, or a crane move. But it has a beauty to it also. People look like... like moving statues. They move like sculpture, as if sculpture is moving in a way. Like dancers...

[Hugo (2011)] really the story of a little boy. But he does become friends with the older Georges Méliès who was discovered in 1927, or 1928, working in a toy store, completely bankrupt. And then he was revived in a way, with a beautiful gala in 1928, in Paris. And in my film, the cinema itself is the connection - the automaton, the machine itself becomes the emotional connection between the boy, his father, Méliès, and his family. It's about how it all comes together, how people express themselves using the technology emotionally and psychologically. It's the connection between the people, and the thing that's missing - how it supplies what's missing.

I've always liked 3D. I mean, we're sitting here in 3D. We are in 3D. We see in 3D. So why not?

[I remember the] curiosity and sense of completion [that drove me to seek out hard-to-find films in his youth, and the undeniable fetishism of film which underwrote that all-consuming passion.] It's interesting because the fetish ideas are all there in Peeping Tom (1960). All the elements: the projector is correct; the lenses are right; the sprockets are correct. Even the sounds of the sprockets are correct. You do . . .

There is a point in time, many times over the years . . . where I've loved to hear the sound of film going through a projector. And I could tell you if it's 35mm or 16mm, you know. Now that's gone, of course . . . but there's a certain kind of . . . it's like going into a trance almost, or I should say a "meditation" of some kind. It depends what you do with it. And it has to come out other ways. For me, it was burning to be able to express myself with cinema, and to be inspired by films.

[The colors of my childhood were inflected by the gaudy hues of Eastmancolor which were] very powerful, very strong and very lurid, and kind of violent in a way. What I saw growing up were those colors, when there was color. Normally it was all hallways with single light bulbs; it was mainly black-and-white in a way. But when it was color, it was harsh, strong; some would say lurid. My formative years were in the '50s, when you had all those popular novels with paperback covers, and films like Raoul Walsh's Battle Cry (1955) were just splashed all over the consciousness of popular culture.

I think I was eight years old when I first saw Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Red Shoes (1948) and it had a very strong impact on me for many reasons: the nature of the storytelling; the images; the editing; the camera movements; the use of music - and the color. And then I saw Stairway to Heaven (1946) on a black-and-white television, and Hour of Glory (1949), again on TV, one afternoon when I was home sick from school. In New York, there was a television show called the Million Dollar Movie, which would show a film twice a night for a week. And so one week it would be Citizen Kane (1941). Edited. With commercials. And with the "News on the March" sequence missing. Ha! That was the first time I'd ever seen it! Then, you know, you'd get The Third Man (1949), with half the film cut out. But one of the films they showed was Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Tales of Hoffmann (1951). And it was cut down to about an hour and 40 minutes or so, black-and-white, with commercials. And it had a quality like "The Red Shoes"--a darkness, and a humor. But what was so interesting to me was the way the camera moved with the music. And the sense of editing. I lived in a tenement with my mother and father and my brother at the time, and if that film was on twice a night, I'd have to keep watching it. At certain point, my mother would ask: "Is it necessary to watch that again?"

Well, I think in my own work the subject matter usually deals with characters I know, aspects of myself, friends of mine - that sort of thing. And we try to work it out. By 'work it out' I mean almost like 'work it through your system'. Particularly, I think, on films like Mean Streets (1973), or Taxi Driver (1976) from 'Paul Schrader''s script. And Raging Bull (1980), especially. At the end of that film, Robert De Niro was fine, but me - I left Jake LaMotta's character more at peace with himself than I was with myself. And I was hoping to get to that moment that he was at the end of the film. That moment where he's looking at himself in the mirror. I was hoping to get there myself. But I hadn't made it. So it's a matter of living through the cinema I think.

A friend of mine sent me that line ["All this filming isn't healthy"] on a note when we were making Raging Bull (1980)! I think it was one of the cinematographers who'd just seen Peeping Tom (1960). And there is no doubt that [film-making] is aggressive and it could be something that is not very healthy. When you make a film... there are times in your life when you're burning with a passion and it's very, very strong. It's almost like a pathology of cinema where you want to possess the people on film. You want to live through them. You want to possess their spirits, their souls, in a way. And ultimately you can't stop. It has to be done until you get to the bitter end. You're exhausted. In some cases friends might have died, in some cases they don't come back, in some cases they can't make another picture. The only thing to do is try to make another picture. It's got to be done again.

Now, I don't mean to sound dramatic, a lot of great films are made that way. And we might not only be talking about cinema here. We could be talking about other things, too. I would think that it might apply to other art forms. But I must say, that with that passion and that power, there is pathology in wanting to live vicariously through the people.

Boardwalk Empire (2010) is made for what I guess you would call the small screen. But we made it like a film; an epic B-film in a way. And you know what? Those small screens aren't that small any more!

[on making Boardwalk Empire (2010), set in the 1920s]: To me, it's as if we're talking now about the 1980s or late 1970s. That was like yesterday to me. The 20s in my head were always very present because my parents always referred to it: the music, the people, the clothes. I know all the songs from that period; I know all the films. We knew it all. And so it was a natural transition. But you know I really was fascinated with the idea of working with Terry Winter and these guys, and taking these characters over 13 hours, developing them, developing their story, the complications of corruption in American politics.

[on black and white films]: Black and white is never really black and white. It's shades of grey.

I'm not a Hollywood director. I'm an in-spite-of-Hollywood director.

[on film preservation] Film is history. With every foot of film that is lost, we lose a link to our culture, to the world around us, to each other and to ourselves.

I think it's certainly interesting that what's happening now, in the past nine or ten years, particularly at H.B.O., was what we had hoped for in the mid-'60s when films were being made for television. We hoped that there would be this kind of freedom, the ability to create another world and develop character in a long-form story and narrative. That didn't happen in the '70s and '80s with television. This is a good example, and H.B.O. has really been the trail-blazer in this, with the extraordinary series that they've had. I've been tempted, over the years, to be involved in one of them because of the nature of the long-form and the development of character and plot. So many of their other series that have been made are thoughtful, intelligent and brilliantly put together. It's a new opportunity for story-telling, which is very different from television in the past. This was my inroad.

At this point, I find that the excitement of a young student or filmmaker can get me excited again. I like showing them things and seeing how their minds open up, seeing the way their response then gets expressed in their own work. (2011)

I'm concerned about a culture where everything is immediate and then discarded. I'm exposing [12-year-old daughter Francesca] to stuff like musicals and Ray Harryhausen spectaculars, Frank Capra films. I just read her a children's version of "The Iliad". I wanted her to know where it all comes from. Every story, I told her, every story is in here, "The Iliad". Three months ago, I had a screening here for the family. Francesca had responded to Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), and to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), so I decided to try It Happened One Night (1934). I had kind of dismissed the film, which some critics love, of course, but then I realized I had only seen it on a small screen, on television. So I got a 35mm print in here, and we screened it. And I discovered it was a masterpiece. The way [Claudette Colbert] and [Clark Gable] move, their body language. It's really quite remarkable!

There was always a part of me that wanted to be an old-time director. But I couldn't do that. I'm not a pro.

There are two kinds of power you have to fight. The first is the money, and that's just our system. The other is the people close around you, knowing when to accept their criticism, knowing when to say no.

I was never interested in the accumulation of money, you know. And I never had a mind for business. There have been serious issues with money over the years. I have a nice house now, in New York. But there have been major, major issues. In the mid-'80s it was pathetic, I mean, my father would help me out. I couldn't go out, I couldn't buy anything. But it's all my own doing.

There is an essence to the project that you must protect. You cannot make concessions on that, the story cannot be tampered with past that point; you have to fight off every power or force around you.

When I get frustrated with the commercial playing field of feature films, I go to these [music documentary] movies. I have had the need, more and more, to explore the spiritual or religious. Elements of that find their way into my music films. Music is for me the purest art form. There's a transcendent power to it, to all kinds, to rock 'n' roll. It takes you to another world, you feel it in your body, you feel a change come over you and a desire to live. That's transcendence.

[on Hugo (2011)] I've always loved 3D, going back to stereoscopic images - devices used in the Victorian period. When 3D was first used in my time, in 1953, I was so excited by it. I was talking to Elia Suleiman, the great Palestinian filmmaker. I said that I was very excited about the use of 3D. He pointed out that, if you do use 3D, it had to be there in the script. With Hugo, I felt that it was.

[in 2011, on his legacy] I don't know if there is any. Maybe a part of me wants there to be, if I'm being brutally honest, but the reality is it's a different experience now, cinema. Young people perceive the world and information in a completely different way to when I was growing up. So what I did in the past, I don't know how they'll see that in the future and if it will mean anything to them. I hope the scripts for Taxi Driver (1976), or Mean Streets (1973), or Raging Bull (1980) or any of these things, will have some resonance in the future for other people, if they see them at all. Things fall out of favor, out of fashion. I have no idea. All I can do is hope to get to make another one.

[on Amos Vogel] If you're looking for the origin of film culture in America, look no further than Amos Vogel. Amos opened the doors to every possibility in film viewing, film exhibition, film curating, film appreciation.

[on The Bronx Bull] At the end of Raging Bull (1980) Jake La Motta is looking in a mirror and he's at comfort with himself. He's not fighting, he's not beating himself up. That's all. So, I don't know where they're going to go. I really don't know what The Bronx Bull" would be.

I have a desire to tell stories. And I'm never quite satisfied.

The cinema began with a passionate relationship between celluloid and the artists and craftsmen and technicians who handled it, manipulated it, and came to know it in the way a lover comes to know every inch of the body of the beloved. No matter where the cinema goes, we cannot afford to lose sight of the beginning.

[on actors hed like to work with] Johnny Depp is one. I like him. He's unique. I don't know how he does it.

[on 2013 release of restored The King of Comedy (1982) ] I've always been partial to comedians - the irreverence, the absurdity, the hostility, all the feelings under the surface - and to the old world of late night variety shows hosted by Steve Allen and Jack Paar and, of course, Johnny Carson, to the familiarity and the camaraderie between the guests. You had the feeling that they were there with you, in your living room.

The King of Comedy (1982) is my coming to terms with disappointment, disappointment with the fact that the reality is different from the dream.

When I first went to L.A. in 1970, there was a little bit of that need in me

to buy into, participate in, the dream world of celebrity. It's almost as if they are like gods and goddesses - that's the impression they make on you from when you're four or five years old. That's the old story. I hear a lot of actors talk about this, where people come up to them and talk to them, and finally the actor gets mad and says, Please, leave me alone. Then the fan thinks, Well, actors are a different kind of person, and also, What do you think I am? I am a person, too.

I think it's accumulated. If it's trained, it's trained from my own films. You can imagine the tension in a scene, or the warmth, or the humor. I think I know the size of the frame, and I think I know when to cut - and when not to. Somehow that comes out of the story, and the actors who are playing the parts. They determine, sometimes, whether you should move the camera or not, whether you should be in close-up, whether it should be a medium close-up. I try to translate all of that into visual terms-the feeling I'd like to get from a scene.

Each film is interlocked with so many other films. You can't get away. Whatever you do now that you think is new was already done in 1913.

[on death] I'm still struggling with the religious aspects of it.

[on Boardwalk Empire (2010)] I don't have time to watch any other shows. I only watched The Sopranos (1999) once or twice. I just couldn't connect with it. I started watching Curb Your Enthusiasm (1999), that is the key one, that is when I realised you could do something on television.

Every time I get on an airplane I know I'm not really an atheist. 'Oh, God, dear God,' I say the minute the plane takes off. 'I'm sorry for all my sins, please don't let this plane crash.' And I keep praying out loud until the plane lands.

You can't do your work according to the people's values. I'm not talking about 'following your dream,' either, I never like the inspirational value of that phrase. Dreaming is a way of trivializing the process, the obsession that carries you through the failure as well as the successes which could be harder to get through. If you're dreaming, you're sleeping. It's important and imperative to always be awake to your feelings, your possibilities, your ambitions. But you also know this, for your work, for your passions, every day is a rededication. Painters, dancers, writers, filmmakers, it's the same for all of you, all of us. Every step is a first step, every brush stroke is a test, every scene is a lesson, every shot is a school. So, let the learning continue.